Previous Day
Curtain up
Irish Times reviewers give their verdicts on the first
night performances of the 50th Ulster Bank Dublin Theatre
Festival p
The soul and essence of trad is in the accent
With more traditional players than ever before, most of them swapping and sharing their music, are they neglecting the regional variations of their art, asks Siobhán Long p
The fine line between memory and story
!['I had to build a world around [the first scene I wrote]. It was almost like being given a photograph in the middle of a story and you have to find all the pictures around it.' Michael Ondaatje in Dublin this week.](/newspaper/images/2007/0929/thumb/1190938505468_1.jpg?ts=1210637591 "'I had to build a world around [the first scene I wrote]. It was almost like being given a photograph in the middle of a story and you have to find all the pictures around it.' Michael Ondaatje in Dublin this week.")
As patient as a fisherman, Michael Ondaatje writes 'up to 20
drafts' of each of his novels. He talks to
Rosita Boland about the precise use of language p
Arts
In defiance of the unspeakable
Culture Shock/Fintan O'Toole: Marcel Marceau, whose father died in Auschwitz, was one of several post-war artists whose silence spoke volumes about the world's loss of innocence pKick-start for golden festival
On The Town/Fiona McCann: Four red carpets, fairy lights and a live jazz band kicked off the long-awaited 50th anniversary of the Dublin Theatre Festival at Dublin's Gaiety Theatre this week. With glamour and glad rags aplenty, Ireland's cultural glitterati piled into the plush venue to watch the opening show, Hibiki, a stunning production from Japanese Butoh dance company Sankai Juku. pGalway artists united on 'goods shed'
ArtScape: Arts Alliance Galway (AAG), the new grouping of more than 50 arts organisations, writers, artists and musicians, has gone into battle over CIÉ's controversial €1 billion proposals for Ceannt Station. This week it issued a strong statement calling for a halt to the plan, and for a public forum on the western capital's infrastructural needs, writes Lorna Siggins . p
New jewels in the Crown
Paul Clements toasts the re-emergence of the Crown Bar in Belfast and surveys the handiwork in its much-needed makeover pThe snailboats washed ashore on the wind
Another Life/Michael Viney: Among the marine bric-a-brac piled along our window sills, a couple of snail shells rest on a bed of cotton wool in a clear plastic box that once held posh chocolates. pHorizons
Let's move heaven and earth Climate change experts are predicting that there will be 150 million environmental refugees by the end of the century. Currently, there are 10 million people in Bangladesh and 25 million people in China living below one metre of sea level. p
Provocative to the end
Biography: Sigmund Freud's ashes rest in a columbarium in London, but Freudianism goes marching on. pA life piece by piece
Biography: At first glance the life of the Anglo-Polish writer Joseph Conrad looks like a biographer's dream. Józef Teodor Konrad Korzeniowski, as he was first known, was born in 1857 in Russian-occupied Poland, the only child of Polish patriots. pComing of age while the world falls apart
Fiction: May 1918: war has become a way of life. A group of young boys in a provincial town in Hungary are about to graduate. pChecking out the coverage
Media: The appearance of Mapping Irish Media: Critical Explorations is to be welcomed, if for no other reason than that there is a dearth of good writing on media issues in Ireland. pAn Aryan Addams family
Biography: Up to the collapse of the Third Reich in 1945, Richard Wagner's immediate family and descendants, holding court in their hulking villa Wahnfried in Bayreuth, saw themselves as the guardians of the Holy Grail and the pinnacle of pure Aryan culture. pA voice for giving
Philanthropy: One of the most impressive people I have ever met is a former New England farmer who gave up the good life many years ago and went to live in Vietnam. pEdging towards equality
History: There are fewer women TDs in the 30th Dáil than there were in the 29th. Noel Whelan, writing in this newspaper on July 21st, called for female candidate quotas in order to redress the gender imbalance in the Dáil. pMaking capital out of fear
Current Affairs: Naomi Klein, the award-winning Guardian columnist and best-selling author of the seminal No Logo: Taking Aim at the Brand Bullies (2000), has just completed her most ambitious project to date. pHolding out for our hero in the last chance saloon
Humour: He's back . . . and he's broke. At the end of his last novel (the irreverently-titled Should Have Got Off At Sydney Parade) we left The Legend gazing adoringly at his new baby daughter, having endured a sympathetic (if that's the word) pregnancy complete with cravings; less babe magnet, more fridge magnet. pIs this the end for DI Rebus?
Crime: Does Exit Music signal the end of DI John Rebus? Those in the know say it is so, but the author and his publishers, like David Chase of The Sopranos fame, remain enigmatic. pFour masters in historic reunion
Loose Leaves: The Annals of the Four Masters, the iconic chronicle of Irish history from prehistory to AD 1616, which influenced the writing of national history from the 17th century onwards, will be reunited for the first time since 1636 in Dublin next month. pPaperbacks
The latest releases reviewed. p
'It'd take a lot to make me feel inadequate but two hours on the beach and not a single female's given me a second George Hook . . .'
Ross O'Carroll - Kelly: How's a goy supposed to score in St Tropez when the beach is crawling with steroid junkies? Maybe using a shark as bait wasn't such a good idea pPolitical strokes of genius
TV Review/Hilary Fannin: 'This is politics, this is life." In a busy domestic week for the world's second-oldest profession, when our elected darlings packed their jam sandwiches into their ninja lunchboxes and resumed hostilities in Dáil Éireann, having slaved over a hot constituency all summer, and when the whiff of dodgy politics continued to permeate the brisk autumnal air, TG4, with impeccable timing and the elegance of a Buswells chandelier, gave us the truly marvellous The Running Mate. pTalkin' jive or stayin' alive?
Radio Review/Bernice Harrison: After a week of spinning, are we any the wiser? It started last Saturday when Bertie Ahern joined Marian Finucane in the Irish College in Paris for a live broadcast (RTÉ Radio 1) - he really should have brought a busker up from the Metro for a violin accompaniment. p
